We are going to build a progressive counterbalance to the tea party. Eighty percent of Americans agree with everything that you say on this show, but we have no voice. We know that jobs are more important, and this phony, made-up deficit stuff they talk about. We know that people who have done well in America should do well by America and start paying America back in the form of more fair taxes.

Hey, schmuck: here's the phony and made-up deficit, courtesy of Barack Obama, which just happens to have resulted in the first downgrade of United States debt in history:

Here's more of WebVan's wisdom:

People who benefited from the bailouts and from the tax breaks should start paying America back. They're doing great.

Everybody else is suffering. That is 80 percent of the majority. And we're going to now have a voice.

Say, iVan: last time I checked, self-identified conservatives outnumbered progressives two-to-one. And with centrists included, liberals are outgunned nearly four-to-one.

But let's not clutter this post with facts, let's go back to TranVan:

"And you're going to see an American fall, an American autumn, just like we saw the Arab spring. You can see it right now with these young people on Wall Street. Hold onto your hats. We're going to have an October offensive to take back the American dream and to rescue America's middle class."

"...it wasn't until I stepped away from the corporate track and worked in city government and eventually helped to found the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program, a national service program, that I realized how important public service and community service was to my own development... And now that the two of us have moved to Washington, our new home -- (applause) -- we both have continued to stress the value of national and community service..." --Michelle Obama, 17 March 2009

Check this out. Behind those dark glasses, tucked under that Nike cap, one of the world's most famous women. Yes, that is the First Lady of the United States at Target...

...Like any mom, except her aide was juggling not one, but two Blackberries. Secret Service agents were blending in, dressed down in casual clothes. Mrs. Obama spent 40 minutes in the store Thursday afternoon, apparently unnoticed by other shoppers. Sources say she was recognized only by the cashier and a photographer from the Associated Press who worked sources to find out she was there. [Ed: heh!]

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama tried to keep the pressure on Congress to consider his nearly $450 billion jobs bill, saying it had been two weeks since he sent the bill to Capitol Hill "and now I want it back."

...So why have Democrats delayed action in the U.S. Senate on President Obama’s stimulus bill?

WLS Radio’s Bill Cameron reports his own party has delayed action in the Senate and talked with Senator Dick Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate, about the reason why.

RUN AWAY!!!

“The oil-producing state senators don’t like eliminating or reducing the subsidy for oil companies, “ Durbin tells WLS Radio, “There are some senators who are up for election who say I’m never gonna vote for a tax increase while I’m up for election, even on the wealthiest people. So, we’re not gonna have 100% Democratic senators. That’s why it needs to be bi-partisan and I hope we can find some Republicans who will join us to make it happen.”

But so far, Durbin concedes Democrats don’t have the votes in the senate to pass it, “Not at the moment, I don’t think we do but, uh, we can work on it."

Liberalism is most assuredly a mental affliction, but the survival instinct is strong in these drones. So we'll have to pry each and everyone from their white-knuckled grip on power using a crowbar and a taser.

"This 'embattled' program has by all business metrics proven an outright success," he wrote. "Even the most controversial loan guarantee recipient -- Solyndra, a solar manufacturer -- is seeing an operational turnaround."

Thursday, September 29, 2011

After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys...

...Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy four Draco pistols for cash and even got a letter from his supervisor, David Voth, authorizing a federally licensed gun dealer to sell him the guns without bothering about the necessary paperwork... On orders, Dodson then sold the guns to known criminals, who first stashed them away and then — deliberately unhindered by the ATF or any other agency — whisked them off to Mexico.

...There are two possible explanations. The first is that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners...

...A second notion is that the CIA ... feared the los Zetas drug cartel was becoming too powerful and might even mount a coup against the Mexican government. So some 2,000 weapons costing more than $1.25 million were deliberately channeled to the rival Sinaloa cartel, which operates along the American border, to keep the Zetas in check.

Phil Jordan, a former CIA operative and one-time leader of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s El Paso Intelligence Center, claims that the Obama administration is running guns to the violent Zetas cartel through the direct commercial sale of military grade weapon...

The U.S. Direct Commercial Sales program is run from the U.S. State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. It regulates and licenses private U.S. companies’ overseas sales of weapons and other defense materials, defense services, and military training. This does not include the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, which authorized sales to foreign governments...

An El Paso Times article – as of now ignored by mainstream media — went into much more shocking detail:

“They’ve found anti-aircraft weapons and hand grenades from the Vietnam War era,” Plumlee said. Other weapons found include grenade launchers, assault rifles, handguns and military gear including night-vision goggles and body armor."

Scenario #3:

• The ATF arms the Sinaloa cartel

• The State Department arms the Zetas

• The combination helps fuel a full-blown civil war in Mexico

• Civilians start streaming north to safety

The resulting humanitarian crisis is used as a lever for a mass immigration event with hundreds of thousands of undocumented Democrats entering the U.S. seeking asylum.

It's as good an explanation as any I've heard -- and certainly consistent with the mindset of the Holder and Obama duo: the ends always justify the means.

Walsh closes with words of wisdom: Time for a special prosecutor, who’s both fast and furious.

There are several political signs attracting all kinds of attention in one Uptown neighborhood... On Wednesday, crowds gathered at the corner of Calhoun and Coralie streets, looking at several signs depicting President Barack Obama as either a dunce, a puppet or a crying baby in a diaper.

The home is owned by Timothy Reily, who declined to be interviewed about the signs. Former Mayor Ray Nagin showed up at the house and went inside to speak with Reily. He emerged later and would not comment on what they discussed.

The signs have created such a firestorm of controversy, though, that police came to the scene-- called in by City Council Member Susan Guidry. She represents the district where the home is located. Guidry said she was concerned about public safety and was trying to figure out if the sign was even legal. She also said she spoke to Reily, but didn't get far.

...Yet, the signs remain in place, fanning the flames of a free speech debate on both sides of the fence.

I love how liberals crow about free speech rights --- until they interfere with their blinkered worldview.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between the president's popularity and the mainstream media's willingness to tell stories that need to be told. As Obama continues to slide in the polls, I'm sure we will find out all kinds of stuff that may have helped 2.5 years ago. While its too late now for everyone impacted by this administration's economic choices, there's hope that everyone will vote more responsibly next year... on both sides of the aisle.

Here's the reader's digest version:

• Billionaire George Kaiser raised at least $50,000 for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. • Kaiser's company, Solyndra, received a $535 million loan guarantee from DOE. • Kaiser's company received the loan before DOE received final copies of outside reviews of the deal.

• Steven Spinner raised $500,000 for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. • Spinner then became one of Energy Secretary Steven Chu's key loan advisers. • Spinner later wrote that he "helped oversee the more than $100 billion" in loans and guarantees. • Spinner executed 29 stock trades in energy companeis while serving as a DOE adviser • Spinner held shares in at least four companies that received DOE loans • Spinner's wife's law firm collected around $2.5 million while representing Solyndra • Spinner's wife's law firm also represented two other companies that received $34 million from DOE

• Steve Westly raised $500,000 for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. • Westly then became one of Energy Secretary Steven Chu's key advisers. • Westly was an investor in five firms that received half a billion dollars in energy grants and loans from DOE.

QOTD: "There’s already plenty of groupthink among American blacks. Over 90% of us vote Democrat with religious regularity, and we have been doing so for over fifty years. For a short time, I was one of them. I realized a few years ago that the Democrats’ promises of equality bestowed by government wasn’t working and will never work. I came to believe that redistributionist policies with the goal of social justice was essentially creating a new plantation within the federal government. Scraps might be thrown our way, but dependence on the plantation would be the inevitable result." --Ali Akbar

The health-insurance premiums employers pay rose sharply this year, with the average annual cost of family coverage passing the $15,000 mark for the first time... The 9% average increase... comes despite a continued trend toward more limited use of medical services in the U.S. Last year, family premiums rose just 3%, the survey found.

Employers' average annual family premium for 2011 was $15,073, up from $13,770 last year. For a single worker, the figure was $5,429, up 8% from $5,049 in 2010. The increase in employees' average premium contribution for a family plan was far less: 3% to $4,129, according to the survey.

...The premium figures aren't in constant dollars but show a significantly steeper rise than general inflation.

Drew Altman, chief executive of the Kaiser Family Foundation, cited a number of possible factors in the employers' premium jump, including projections that employees would use more health-care services than they did, continued increases in health-care prices, insurers' push for profits and, to some extent, the federal health-care overhaul.

Gee, ya think?

Whatever you do, please don't call the 15-member board -- that will decide which treatments you are eligible for -- a "death panel".

...Secretary of State Clinton ... is warning that any American action, even symbolically, toward recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel must be avoided for the reason that it would jeopardize the peace process.

Her warnings were issued in a brief she has just filed with the Supreme Court — in which she is arguing that a law she voted for when she was Senator is unconstitutional because it could require the U.S. government to give to an American citizen born at Jerusalem papers showing the birthplace as Israel...

...Hillary Rodham Clinton says she considers Jerusalem to be the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel and will be an active advocate if elected to New Yorks Senate seat to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

In a letter that became public Thursday, Mrs. Clinton wrote If I am chosen by New Yorkers to be their senator, or in whatever position I find myself in the years to come, you can be sure that I will be an active, committed advocate for a strong and secure Israel, able to live in peace with its neighbors, with the United States Embassy located in its capital, Jerusalem.

If you hadn't figured it out yet, here's a quick refresher course:

Because most Americans have conservative leanings, Democrats have to lie to get into office.

It’s as if Solyndra never happened. The Obama Administration is giving $737 million to a Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve. PCG is an investment partner with SolarReserve. Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law happens to be the number two man at PCG...

The Energy Department announced Wednesday that is has finalized a $737 million loan guarantee for a Nevada solar project. [This comes] several weeks after a California-based solar manufacturer that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration in 2009 filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers, setting off a firestorm in Washington.

The $737 million loan guarantee will help finance construction of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 110-megawatt solar-power-generating facility in Nye County, Nev. The project is sponsored by Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve.

Crescent Dunes is the latest solar project to receive a loan guarantee from the Energy Department in recent weeks. The department announced a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to Abengoa Solar for a solar generation project in California and a $150 million loan guarantee to 1366 Technologies for a Massachusetts solar manufacturing project earlier this month... The Energy Department says the project will result in 600 construction jobs and 45 permanent jobs.

QOTD: "Operation Twist will result in over $400 billion in bonds to be sold and another $400 billion in bonds to be purchased. For a total trade of $800 billion. Mr. Bernanke, if you are reading (and we know you are) IceCap humbly volunteers our services to help you execute these trades and since it is for the good of the World we will only charge 0.001% for our services. We are confident this $8 million fee will be considerably lower than what you will be paying Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street primary dealers. You can call us collect if you want. " --IceCap Asset Management, September 2011

European leaders have their heads in the sand, or perhaps up Treasury Secretary Tim Geithners' a$$ as it was Geithner who actually hatched the ballyhooed leveraged bailout scheme.

Yes, they have hatched a plan to use leverage, but that plan has enormous risks. Moreover, it is questionable at best the German supreme court will allow that plan to stand.

Even if the plan does stand, throwing trillions of Euros around just to prevent Greece from defaulting hardly seems like a sensible policy. The sensible policy would have been to let Greece default two years ago.

Yes, that's what I would recommend for the world's most difficult financial engineering task: rely on the schemes of a man -- Tim Geithner -- who couldn't figure out how to use TurboTax.

QOTD: "The Solyndra bankruptcy, alas, is not an outlier but a harbinger. This is the kind of economic calamity we will see more of unless the Obama administration sheds its ideological blinders or until it leaves office. Meanwhile, capital will continue to be misallocated through perverse incentives and outright political favoritism, and large amounts of patiently acquired wealth will be wiped out." --Steven Hayward

Despite a major income tax increase, the state of Illinois is expected to end the budget year more than $8 billion in the red...

...In all, the state will be $8.3 billion short on June 30 if nothing is done, according to the report. The majority of that money, roughly $5.5 billion, will come in the form of unpaid bills from companies that provide everything from meals for the elderly to toilet paper for prisoners. Another $1.2 billion is composed of Medicaid payments the state will push off until the next budget year, while the remaining $1.6 billion is owed to companies for tax returns and health insurance bills for state workers.

...Msall is calling on lawmakers to rein in pension costs by limiting benefits for current employees. It's an effort led by House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego that has been met with skepticism from some leading Democrats, including [Democrat Governor] Quinn.

...Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Frank Mautino of downstate Spring Valley said lawmakers can ease some of the budget burden by borrowing to pay off the backlog of bills... More borrowing is an idea the Civic Federation has opposed, contending that the state's reliance on loans leads to higher debt payments that ultimately means less money to spend on daily operations.

This is also the Democrats' plan at the federal level in microcosm. Rather than living within their means, these reprehensible hacks instead want to fight the growing budget deficit by... borrowing more money.

But I can understand their reluctance to slash: there's nothing to cut!

• Law gives huge pension perks to union leaders: "All it took to give nearly two dozen labor leaders from Chicago a windfall worth millions was a few tweaks to a handful of sentences in the state's lengthy pension code... The changes became law with no public debate among state legislators and, more importantly, no cost analysis...

Twenty years later, 23 retired union officials from Chicago stand to collect about $56 million from two ailing city pension funds thanks to the changes."

• One-day rehiring nets former Chicago labor leader a $158,000 city pension: "Gannon is eligible for the lucrative pension deal only because City Hall rehired the former Streets and Sanitation Department worker for a single day in 1994, then granted him an indefinite leave of absence... State law allowed Gannon to retire from the city in 2004, the year he turned 50; since then, he has received about $1 million from his city pension. He stands to collect approximately $5 million during his lifetime...

...Until last year, that pension came on top of Gannon's union salary, which had grown to more than $240,000. He now draws the pension while working for a hedge fund, Grosvenor Capital Management, that does work with public pensions, including the Teachers Retirement System of Illinois. The firm also was one of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's largest campaign contributors."

I'm just wondering at what point the electorate revolts. Or do they just surrender and let Illinois collapse without a fight?

For the record: I believe Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. I'm not convinced, however, that Henry Waxman was born on this planet and am hereby officially demanding the release of his long-form birth certificate.

The "Arab Spring" -- violent revolts in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen -- can be traced back to rising food prices, food shortages and imminent starvation. Prior to the Yemeni uprising, for example, seven million citizens "were forced to reduce their number of daily meals from three to one."

The Food Crises: A quantitative model of food prices including speculators and ethanol conversion

Recent increases in basic food prices are severely impacting vulnerable populations worldwide. Proposed causes such as shortages of grain due to adverse weather, increasing meat consumption in China and India, conversion of corn to ethanol in the US, and investor speculation on commodity markets lead to widely differing implications for policy. A lack of clarity about which factors are responsible reinforces policy inaction...

Here, for the first time, we construct a dynamic model that quantitatively agrees with food prices. The results show that the dominant causes of price increases are investor speculation [Ed: market forces, i.e., supply-and-demand] and ethanol conversion. Models that just treat supply and demand are not consistent with the actual price dynamics...

...Both causes of price increase, speculative investment and ethanol conversion, are promoted by recent regulatory changes—deregulation of the commodity markets, and policies promoting the conversion of corn to ethanol. Rapid action is needed to reduce the impacts of the price increases on global hunger.

It's time for the government to get out of the fuel business. It's time to stop subsidizing ethanol; to disband the regulatory state that prevents exploitation of our natural resources; and to let the free market dictate what we use to power our society.

Because the destruction wrought by the environmental, flat-earth, no-growth Marxist left must be stopped.

QOTD: "Why is it more moral for a federal bureaucrat in a state-supplied SUV to shut down an offshore oil rig on grounds that it is too dangerous for the environment than for a private individual to risk his own capital to find some sort of new fuel to power his government’s SUV fleet? All affluent societies believe that they are just too rich not to be able to afford another regulation, just one more moralizing indulgence, yet again an added entitlement. But as we see now in postmodern America, idle 250,000 acres of farmland for a tiny fish, shut down an entire oilfield, put off a new natural gas find in worry over possible environmental alteration, add a cent to the sales tax, mandate yet another prescription drug entitlement not funded, or offer yet another in-state tuition discount to an illegal alien — and the costs finally equate to an implosion as we see in Greece or California. And as we know from past collapses, a new entitlement in a matter of minutes becomes an institutionalized right whose withdrawal causes far more anguish than its prior nonexistence. Justinian learned that when he sought to cut the civil service and almost lost his throne." --Victor Davis Hanson

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Politico, home of failed Washington Post reporters, offers a feature called "The Arena", which it touts as a daily debate among "policy-makers and opinion shapers".

On July 20, 2010 the topic of the day was "...will branding tea party 'racist' work?". Among dozens of respondents, Mary Frances Berry -- a famous liberal activist and former Clinton appointee -- accidentally blurted out the truth:

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats.

There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November [2010]. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

The tactic of tarring innocent people as racists is despicable, but not unexpected coming from the sewer-dwelling thought leaders of the hard left Democrat Party. In fact, the current administration has done more to promote racial divisiveness than any White House since the Wilson administration.

The Tea Party is interested in one color: the yellowed parchment of the United States Constitution. You know, Democrats: that antiquated document that you take an oath to uphold, lying all the while.

And keep trying to demonize black Tea Party superstars like Herman Cain, Rep. Tim Scott and Rep. Allen West. Your egregious lies are creating new cadres of strong, African-American conservatives and growing the membership of the National Black Republican Association.

According to the company’s proposal to join a United Nations clean-air program, the settlers living in this area left in a “peaceful” and “voluntary” manner...

...People here remember it quite differently... villagers described gun-toting soldiers and an 8-year-old child burning to death when his home was set ablaze by security officers... “They said if we hesitated they would shoot us,” said William Bakeshisha, adding that he hid in his coffee plantation, watching his house burn down. “Smoke and fire.”

According to a report released by the aid group Oxfam on Wednesday, more than 20,000 people say they were evicted from their homes here in recent years to make way for a tree plantation run by a British forestry company, emblematic of a global scramble for arable land.

...Across Africa, some of the world’s poorest people have been thrown off land to make way for foreign investors... in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.

The case twists around an emerging multibillion-dollar market trading carbon-credits under the Kyoto Protocol, which contains mechanisms for outsourcing environmental protection to developing nations.

The company involved, New Forests Company, grows forests in African countries with the purpose of selling credits from the carbon-dioxide its trees soak up to polluters abroad. Its investors include the World Bank, through its private investment arm, and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC.